Two-in-five workers know someone who has 'lost a job to AI'

More than a fifth of workers say they have either lost their job to AI, or know someone who has. But close to half of those using technology in their work still have their concerns around its effectiveness, including 23% who had a “love-hate” relationship with it.

For the longest time, automation and AI have been synonymous with discussions about job-losses. Exemplifying this, a 2024 study from Sia Partners suggested that the rise of large language models and GenAI technologies would transform as many as 79% of occupations – which would see at least one-tenth of their tasks influenced by the adoption of automated processes.

That study also claimed that included a 28% portion of roles which would see a huge 80% of tasks exposed to the promises of GenAI. With the forecast acceleration of GenAI and LLMs, the researchers asserted that this could see wide-spread job-losses in the relevant sectors. In particular, the study predicted three-in-ten back-office roles could be heading for the axe.

Now, a new survey of nearly 1,500 employees has suggested that may already be manifesting. According to a poll from Kickresume, 10% of respondents “knew someone who had” lost their job to AI, while 11% said “this had happened to them personally”. Meanwhile, 79% said they did not know anyone who had experienced this – in line with the earlier estimates from Sia Partners.

Peter Duris, CEO and Co-Founder of Kickresume, commented, “Nearly one in five people have either lost their jobs to AI or know someone who has, so it’s no surprise that professionals are feeling the pressure to adapt. In fact, more than 60% said they’ve had to rethink their career or adjust how they work because of AI.”

Kickresume is a self-styled “AI-based career tool”. In its quest to support the global workforce to adapt to the alleged AI revolution, it has been polling employees since 2021 to monitor the influx of the technology into the workplace. In 2021, the survey found 39% of professionals were using some form of automation in their work. But since the hype around AI has gone mainstream, that number has jumped to 96% saying they use AI tools “at least sometimes” to help with their work – with half saying they used it in some capacity every day.

While that might sound like a lot, the definition of AI has become increasingly amorphous in recent months. While a killer app or leading business use of new AI tools is yet to present itself, technologies which have been adopted as common practice for some time have instead been included in the explanations of why this new technology is still indispensable to businesses – even as investor sentiment cools.

At the same time, critics of the sector will note that it is difficult to know the number of employees which have truly lost their job to AI, verses the number who have been laid off by companies citing new AI implementations to avoid bad press. For example, a number of global firms have slashed back office functions in recent months – and some have even done so while touting new ‘AI’ capabilities to pick up the slack from those losses. But if most firms are not actually using AI to fulfil the work, who is actually doing it?

One option seems to be that the roles are set to be outsourced to cheaper labour markets – a historic tradition under global capitalism, which is both less ‘revolutionary’, and less palatable to public sentiment. But with several market shocks threatening to stymie the record rates of funding AI developers still need to improve the technology in a way that fulfils on its promises, using AI hype as a smokescreen for farming out jobs to low-wage economies might be the most stable future that AI actually has.

This could arguably explain why there is such a huge boost in the number of jobs being ‘lost to AI’, even as it seems that most managers do not trust the technology to actually deliver on its promises in important business functions. A recent study from Eden McCallum surveyed consulting attitudes to the technology, for example.

While eight-in-ten consultants were using AI as part of their work, just 10% used it every day, and that number fell even further when relating to mission-critical operational tasks, including business administration and back-office functions. In those cases, not a single consultant deployed AI daily – despite the consulting sector remaining steadfast in its hyperbole around the potential of AI for clients.

Kickresume’s study also notes data which may underline why that lack of trust still pervades. While 57% of those using the technology regularly said they loved using AI. But a sizeable 23% had “a love/hate relationship” with the technology, while 9% only used it “because they have to”, 7% said they “can see the potential but consider it to be “useless” right now”, and 4%, believed it “creates more problems than it solves”.